Amnesty (African reconciliation) versus the International Criminal Court (Western justice) (19th July)

There are some things about different cultures that will always be difficult to understand for those on the outside. People here look at me with disgust when I tell them I like eating seafood but they will quite happily chew on termites and grasshoppers!?!

While I may be able to carry a jerry-can on my head, to use local body language and lose some of my mzungu ways while I am here – there is one thing I find really hard to understand. That is, the wish of the people in northern Uganda to have Joseph Kony, the leader of the rebellion that has caused them 20 years of torture, to be offered complete Amnesty.

It is a topic that is hot at the moment with the current peace process. Kony and 4 of his top commanders were some of the first people to have warrants issued against them for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. The current talks are being mediated by the southern Sudanese government, who have put them self at risk of international retribution. Under the Rome Statute, signatory countries (which include Uganda, Sudan and I think Congo) are bound to arrest these people so they can be tried in The Hague. The arrest warrants were not a popular move for many Acholi people (people from the north) because they felt it would mean that Kony would never “come out of the bush”. Some members of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative even travelled to The Hague, offering themselves for arrest instead of Kony.

While I agree with the argument that some members of the UPDF (Ugandan Army) should also have been charged under the Rome Statute, I find it really difficult to understand how people who have been victims in the war could want total Amnesty. While I think Amnesty is definitely necessary for the children who have been abducted, I don’t think it should apply to the top commanders who joined voluntarily.

The questions I have been asking everyone:
“Why do you want Amnesty for Kony?”
“How could he just walk into the community after all he has done?”
“Don’t you think that he is only now talking about Amnesty because he is close to being defeated? The Amnesty applied to him for years before and he never accepted.”
“What about your relatives who have been killed by the rebels and your nieces and nephews who were abducted and the people who have been mutilated. How can you forgive that?”

I have been firing these questions to many different people. While I accept their reasoning of their preference for traditional justice mechanisms, I still find it difficult to understand. Some don’t even mention these traditional practices – they just want Kony to come out of the bush so that peace can prevail. But peace without justice?? That is what doesn’t sit so right with me. I have also felt the repercussions of such a system in Rwanda, where people who participated in the genocide returned to living side by side to the families of victims. While there may be “peace” now in Rwanda, the feeling I got when I visited there was rather eerie, like there was a ton of tension building up underneath a “peaceful” exterior. People would not use the “H” or “T” words (Hutu or Tutsi), as it seemed they did not want to mention or acknowledge the gross ethnic based massacres that had occurred.

I’ve used these arguments when talking with people here. I have bantered back and forth, trying to understand the justification.

Finally, Shanti, my “brother in law” and a child rights advocate said to me,
“Amy, do you know why you don’t understand? Because you’re not from here”.